With J.J. Abrams moving onto a galaxy far, far away, Paramount Pictures needs a new director to boldly go forward with Star Trek 3. Already, some top candidates have emerged.

Latino Review posits that the job is likely to go to Jon M. Chu, the director of G.I. Joe: Retaliation and the upcoming G.I. Joe sequel. But Chu’s representatives have since denied the report, stating, “Chu has not been contacted about the project.” Meanwhile, both Collider and Cinematallica report that Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt is the real contender, with the latter outlet describing him as “virtually a lock at this stage in the game.”

While the director search remains ongoing, Paramount has keyed in on two writers for the rebooted Star Trek series’ third outing: returning scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Furthermore, The Hollywood Reporter asserts that J.J. Abrams is in negotiations to produce the project, even as he prepares to direct the next Star Wars film for Disney.

Now that writers are in place, it’s worth wondering the direction of the next Star Trek movie’s story. Actor Karl Urban has one tip in mind for the film’s writers: keep it original.

“Because in Star Trek Into Darkness we took one of the most revered and loved adversaries of the Enterprise and put him in there, and did a story that had all of these wonderful nods to films from the past, and episodes from the past. I really think that what we should do from here, in my personal opinion, is strive to be original,” he told IGN recently. “Strive to be something different and new. You know, let’s not forget that Star Trek as envisioned was about space exploration. And it would be really wonderful to harness the spirit of that and apply it to the next film, so that we do something different than a revenge-based picture.”